No, Steve, unfortunately not! Under Section 37 Catholic schools (most of which are public and government funded!) can refuse to employ/promote or dismiss any member of staff who they feel doesn’t comply with or threatens the ethos of the school. It makes it very stressful as naturally in the staffroom everyone is talking about their partners, familes and social lives : /

Is this will do is add a few extra lines to the bullying polices that already fail to protect children in Irish schools.
90% of school’s in Ireland are controlled by the Roman Catholic Church and most have shown no real effort to protect children from homophobic bullying.
Religious control of education is the elephant in the room and no straight politician here is willing to touch it with a ten foot barge pole.

Perhaps Mr. Quinn TD can convince his FG government partners to abolish Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act….

““37(1) A religious, educational or medical institution which is under the direction or control of a body established for religious purposes or whose objectives include the
provision of services in an environment which promotes certain religious values shall not be taken to discriminate against a person for the purposes of this Part or Part II if
… (b) it takes action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a
prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution.”

I went to a VEC and found that the staff were willing to discuss LGBT issues and often spoke out against homophobic language, we were a Catholic ethos school but publicly funded with only one religious representative on the board of management. Always thought that it was only private schools that could fire a staff member for being gay, also the reason that this problem hasn’t been resolved is because the equality commission and human rights commission are being merged. The government is planning on changing the legislation, although it should have been done a long time ago, also under the current legislation a person can be fired from a religious run institution for being divorced.

Indeed, I hear you. Gone are the days of the “Letitia Dunbar-Harrison” or the “Fethard Boycott”. I have gay friends who are Primary School teachers who are self described as “Catholic”. All it takes is one letter from a Hard Core Catholic parent to the Bishop of the Diocese who gives the School his patronage, and one of my friends could be suspended from work.

Although the likelihood is small, the following uproar would be probably international news, but the Bishop would be perfectly entitled under the law.

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